For the Love of Math

When Daddy asked G what he liked to learn best, G's reply was, "Math!" Today we did a few simple addition and subtraction problems on his white board, then G wanted to do the writing. He wrote:

100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
+100
_____
1200

Following his lead, I showed him how to work a double and triple digit addition problem. I don't know that it stuck, but exposure is the key right now, and I'm excited about it. It's amazing where kids can go if we let them hold the reigns every once in a while.

Behavior Jar

Someone on one of my yahoo groups posted this today and G loved the idea. We took a small jar and pasted on some tissue paper squares with watered down Elmer's glue. Each time I notice G doing something helpful, kind, or having a good attitude, he gets to put a marble in the jar. Whenever I see him whining, complaining or being disobedient, we take a marble out of his jar. When he collects 25 marbles, he gets a quarter.

We've only had the jar for a couple of hours, but they have been a couple of the most helpful, cooperative hours we've ever had! Let's see how long this lasts!

Microscope Fun!

We got the microscope out today and took a peek at some things Grandma sent from Georgia. We looked at Grandma's dog's hair, Grandma's hair, Grandpa's hair and a leg from a GA spider. G drew out what each thing looked like under the microscope and we e-mailed his observations to Grandma so she could see it too.

Crocheted Pot Holder

I found this project as I was checking out new blogs the other day and just HAD to try it. Here's my version:

The Duchess Bakes a Cake - Science

On Friday we made bread dough to see the rising effect of the yeast.

Creative Love

Here are a couple of things G has created this week:

This one was for me, because he loves me. :-)

And this one is for Grandma because she's always nice to him and he wanted to do something special for her. It's about 3 1/2 feet tall! I'm not sure how she'll get it home.

The Duchess Bakes a Cake - Catapult

This week we are reading The Duchess Bakes a Cake by Virginia Kahl. There are lots of great vocabulary words and new concepts in this story that we are exploring this week. Today we used plastic spoons to catapult mini M&Ms into each others' mouths. We also viewed videos on www.youtube.com of home made catapults and human catapults. :-)

Leprechaun Mischief!!

This morning we woke up to green toilet water, pictures turned upside down and sideways, green milk for our Lucky Charms, a chair on top of the table, and green string strung all over the kitchen. Looks like leprechauns came to our house and made mischief! :-)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

That's What Leprechauns Do - Lapbook

Here are some photos of our finished lapbook for this week's book That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting. I got all the components for this lapbook from http://www.homeschoolshare.com/

That's What Leprechauns Do - Science

Today we used a flashlight, a piece of black construction paper, tape, scissors, and a clear glass of water to separate light into the colors of the rainbow. We found instructions on how to do this here. I was happy to be able to get a picture of our result to show you:

That's What Leprechauns Do - Math

This week we are reading That's What Leprechauns Do by Eve Bunting. I've found lots of activities to go along with this book at http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ and we will be putting together a lapbook this week to go with this story. Today we did a fun little math activity to go along with the leprechaun theme. We graphed the marshmallows that we found in a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal. First, we lined up the marshmallows according to kind like this:

Then, in order to make the graph suitable to keep in our lapbook, we drew each kind of marshmallow at the bottom of our graph and colored the appropriate number of boxes for each kind. Last, G wrote in how many of each kind we found in the bowl.

Math Worksheets

A friend of mine (thanks, Angie!) shared this site with me where you can generate your own math worksheets: http://www.themathworksheetsite.com/ . I decided to give it a try today to see if G would understand what it all meant. I've introduced him to addition problems written this way, but he's used to doing them horizontally. Anyway, he understood and he LOVED it! I didn't think he would, but he really enjoyed doing these. He even asked if we could do it again sometime. :-) Now this is hanging on our refrigerator:

My Husband, the Homeschooling Advocate

My husband has been educating those around him on the subject of homeschooling, and they have been listening. He has a gift. He is able to relate to people very well, and with a 5 minute conversation he can take someone from "Homeschoolers are strange." to "Wow, I can see how homeschooling can be a great thing!"

It makes me smile to think that just from what he has learned from my research, he is able to be so persuasive and a great advocate for homeschooling when he's out and about. I'm proud of him. That's MY man!!